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Android's default messaging apps are probably used by a minority small enough to fit on a palm of a regular sized human hand. Yes, no one uses them.

In most cases you either pick up WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger – both owned by Facebook, mind you – and only open up Messages, or whatever it's called, when absolutely necessary.

Now, this isn't the case on iOS. Apple has managed to capture many, perhaps even most, iPhone users with their iMessage. And I say capture, because it really limits their options moving forwards as there is no iMessage for Android, and likely never will.

So Apple knows that they have built a walled garden, with oh so delicious blue dots and off-putting green ones.

Obviously Google wants to be part of this messaging game. After all, Google wants to play all the games. However, every single approach since Gchat, later Hangouts, have been utter failures in the grand scheme of things. Google seems to be horrible at implementing social media and messaging.

Another try might be on the way, as Android Police have found proof, albeit very unofficial, about a new iteration of messaging on Android.

Google's crusade for a safer, more secure web has been taking place for years. Especially after the Snowden leaks everyone has been more interested of encrypted messaging and secure web traffic.

It is no surprise then that Google is about to take another step securing the entire web. The company has now announced on their Chromium blog that their upcoming browser will mark all HTTP sites as "not secure."

Starting with Chrome 68, Google's Chrome browsers will notify the user, albeit not intrusively, if they are using a website that doesn't support HTTPS connections. Currently Chrome does not inform the user about non-secure websites unless they click the information button next to the URL.

When users browse secure websites with HTTPS connection they are already notified that the connection is secure on the address bar.

Many popular websites have already transitioned to HTTPS, and that includes AfterDawn.com, but even on the top 100 websites 19 do not support HTTPS yet. Google tightening the noose around HTTP is bound to bring that closer to 100, and of course increase the overall HTTPS penetration, which currently stands at 68% on Windows and Android and 78% on Mac and Chrome OS.

Even though Google's mobile operating system, Android, is arguably not as open source as the company wants you to think, many of the building blocks of it, thanks to AOPS or Android Open Source Project, are everybody's game. This is not the case in Apple's world as most of iOS is completely closed off from anyone outside Apple.

This also means that changing how iOS operates requires some high-level hacking, and as many of us know jailbreaking is quite the hassle compared to Android. Thus it was probably quite a shock to Apple when they found out one of the most important, if not the most important, parts of iOS source code was leaked.

Motherboard reports that part of iOS source code found its way to GitHub, a hosting service for git version control often used for source code. This part, called iBoot, is the one responsible for starting up the device before the user has any control over it.

It's the same part that in Android devices is fairly accessible and it allows custom Android ROM's to be installed. One could imagine that hackers and jailbreakers are going to be enjoying a life of Riley.

According to reports, Google is developing its own game streaming service that would allow users to pay a monthly fee and play all the games available in the service. Basically a Spotify/Netflix meets gaming.

Streaming is apparently Google's choice rather than hopping into processing power competition against the likes of Sony and Microsoft. Games would be streamed over the internet and played with relatively cheap device.

Reports say that originally Google had thought about extending Chromecast to allow gaming, but now also the Android-based console is in the plans. Releasing its own Android-based console would put Google directly against the Nvidia's Shield and other Android-based gaming projects.

Project, codenamed Yeti, has been in works for some time now and was expected to be launched back in 2017, but has gone through series of rethinking ever since. Google recently hired a former Microsoft and Sony veteran, Phil Harrison to oversee the project.

The world's largest consumer electronic show, aptly name CES or Consumer Electronics Show, just ended few weeks ago and we're already approaching the largest mobile trade show, Mobile World Congress.

What we saw in terms of televisions at CES, although there was plenty more, we'll see in a few week about smartphones at MWC 2018. It usually starts with a bang as many of the biggest players on the market reveal their latest and greatest smartphones.

Last year, though, arguably the biggest of them all was missing as Galaxy S8 was released a month later in a standalone event. This year, Samsung returns to Barcelona's show floors with added flair as it is gearing up for the release of Galaxy S9.

Rumors and leaks around Galaxy S9 have been tightening the noose around the neck of Samsung's secrecy. Now, new leaks have revealed the devices, the normal and the plus-sized model, in full, and another set of rumors might reveal even the price point.

The duo of devices to be revealed on February 25th, Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9, carry a very similar design. They seem to have the same glass sandwich design from last year, that is beautiful but fragile.

If you want to look for surprises, you could maybe call the camera setups one. The normal S9 has a single shooter, while the bigger one employs a dual-camera setup. Also Samsung has definitely learned a lesson with the fingerprint sensor, that was previously placed too high next to the camera. Perhaps the most complained about feature of last years model seems now fixed.

Adobe has announced that there's a "Level 1" security vulnerabiltiy in Adobe Flash plug-in.

The vulnerability allows attacker to gain control of the host computer. Adobe said it will publish a patcj on 5th of February to fix the issue. Meanwhile, it is recommended to avoid using Flash.

Vulnerability affects all major platforms, including:

• Adobe Flash Player Desktop Runtime for Windows and Mac
• Adobe Flash Player for Google Chrome for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS
• Adobe Flash Player for Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 10 and 8.1
• Adobe Flash Player Desktop Runtime for Linux

Kids nowadays might not even remember, but most of the music was sold in physical format still back in last decade or so. Actually, in 2001, the U.S. CD sales peaked at 800 million copies sold - having collapsed to mere 89 million in 2017.

During the CD's heyday, Best Buy was one of the major CD retailers in the U.S. Now, Best Buy has decided to cease selling CDs altogether as they generate only $40 in revenue. In June, CDs will disappear from all Best Buy stores across the U.S.

At the same time, another large retail chain, Target, is pressuring record labels to agree to buy back the unsold CDs it cannot sell through its stores. Traditionally, the unsold inventory has been retailer's problem, not labels' problem, but as CD sales continue to plummet, Target wants to change that.

According to IFPI's global stats, physical records still generate appx 34 percent of the global sales and are still somewhat strong in certain geographical areas, like in Japan and Germany. But digital revenue, driven by Spotify and YouTube grew as much as 177 percent in 2016 and are unlikely to slow down.

So, the concept of owning a physical piece of plastic that has music on it, is about to end. Sure, vinyl records and CDs will be made also in future. But you wont find those from local convenience stores, supermarkets or gas stations anymore. You have to find a specialist record store - physical one or an e-commerce site - to buy one.

Ever since the mid-December peak of nearly $20 000 Bitcoin has been in somewhat disorderly decline. It has dropped under $10 000 a few times this year already but it took the lowest dip today since mid-November.

Bitcoin price dropped shortly to under $8000 which it hasn't done since November 18 according to Coindesk. The year has not been good for Bitcoin so far, as even after a short recovery to over $17 000 in early January it has lost half of its value.

The drop under $8000 only lasted for an hour though, and now Bitcoin is again closing on $9000, but it is uncertain when, if ever, it will break again even the $10 000 barrier.

The price drop is attributed to Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck being raided as well as general atmosphere around increased regulations. Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency to have had a rough start to the year.

The top dollar for Bitcoin was recorded on December 18th when it hit approximately $19 500 per coin.

Last fall Google released their new data-saving YouTube Go app. If you are fortunate enough to have an unlimited data plan on your smartphone then this probably isn't the app for you – although one could argue there's still use for it – but many do not have such privilege and that's where YouTube Go might save you a small hunk of money.

YouTube Go is obviously a YouTube app that is meant for mainly developing countries where data is more precious than in the US or especially many part of Western Europe. Thus it is increasingly important that YouTube Go is available widely, and the new announcement from Google does just that.

Google has expanded the availability of YouTube Go to over 130 countries. Most of these new additions come from Southeast Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as Africa.

The app supports downloading YouTube videos on your smartphone or on a SD card for offline viewing and you can share videos with people nearby with the help of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct.

If you'd like to try it out and have found a reason to use a data-saving, albeit a bit dumbed-down, version of YouTube, you can head to APK Mirror to download it unofficially.

Microsoft revealed last fall that it will soon introduce a new version of its super popular office suite. The selection of office programs is called Office 2019 and includes new versions of its iconic software, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, SharePoint, Exchange, as well as Skype for Business.

Now it has been revealed that the new Office 2019 will not be available for any other version of the Windows family except for the newest iteration. This means that only Windows 10 and Windows 10S users will be able to use the latest and greatest Office tools.

No support is thus included for Windows 7 or even Windows 8.1 which is only four years old at this moment. You'll obviously still have the older version of Office to use or you can upgrade to Office 365 which offers online tools.

The preliminary version of Office 2019 will become available somewhere around summer but at this point we don't have an official, final release date. Microsoft will keep developing the tools until they're passing the company's quality checks after which they will release the final version of Office 2019.

Office for Mac is considered within Microsoft a different product and thus this restriction is not applied to products on Apple computers.

Apple has today released the latest quarterly results ending in December. The first quarter results for fiscal year 2018 have smashed both revenue and profit records of years past.

The quarter ending after the holidays resulted first time ever in revenue of more than $80 billion. The 13 percent rise in revenue meant a record-setting $88.3 billion figure largely thanks to the new high-end iPhone model, the iPhone X.

Another record was rewritten as Apple managed to break the streak of stalling profits as it first time ever passed the $20 billion mark. For three years Apple's profits have been hovering around $18 billion no matter the increase in revenue. Perhaps the introduction of a more expensive iPhone (iPhone X starting at $999) and thus improved margins were the most important factor in hiking up the profits.

This time around the profits increased almost as much as revenue – 12% vs 13%.

The revenue streams were very similar to past year's first quarter. The iPhone took approximately 70% share while the rest was divided more or less evenly (between iPad, Services, Mac, and Other) with Services leading the pack with nearly 10% and Other just topping 6%.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told that iPhone X popularity was a surprise even to them and it has managed to hold on to the title of the most popular iPhone to this day. He also revealed that the company soared past 1.3 billion devices in January, which means an increase of over 30 percent in just two years.

The past two years have been good for retro gamers. First, we got NES Classic Edition from Nintendo back in 2016. In 2017, arrived SNES Classic. And now, probably the biggest legend of them all, Commodore 64 is making a return.

USC-powered mini computer, dubbed as The C64 Mini, will be available in March, 2018 with suggested retail price of 79,90 € in Europe, appx. $70 in United States.

The retro gaming kit will include a miniature version of Commodore 64 chassis (unfortunately the keyboard is just for the authentic look and is not functional), a USB joystick (for those too young to remember, joystick is a gaming controller with one stick and two buttons..) and pre-installed 64 licensed games.

Device has HDMI output that sends out 720p video in correct 4:3 aspect ratio, two USB ports for joysticks or a USB keyboard and internal storage for saved game states and game records.

Google just updated its free (and ad-free) file manager for Android devices, Files Go.

Files Go is Google's solution to Android's ever-present problem of storage memory being full. Files Go can analyze the device's storage and find duplicate files, unused installed applications and old cache files that take up space - and allow deleting such files in order to free up some resources.

App that was originally launched back in 2017 was recently updated to a new version that now supports also SD cards for scanning and has better UI for tablet-sized devices. App is also pretty good file manager and in that area, things have improved too: users can now choose default apps for each file type (regardless of the Android's internal default selections).

You can download Files Go from here.

Just as Mozilla updated their browsers, with new Firefox 58, Google answers with a new browser version of their own. Among other things Google's new Chrome 64 is said to be offering better protection against malicious or just plain annoying websites.

The most important improvement in the new Chrome version is probably the new, improved, and more efficient popup blocker. It should take care of all annoying windows or dialogs appearing in front that you did not initiate or ask for.

Lately Google has been focusing more and more to make the web experience more enjoyable probably in the hopes that people would allow the showing of fairly innocuous ads they themselves promote.

Obviously blocking annoying ads is good for Google, if it considers none of their own ads annoying. Especially if that means people will give up the ad blockers that would otherwise block even the less eyestrain-inducing ads that the king of online advertisement uses.

Many of the other improvements to Chrome 64 are focused on developers.

Apple has released a preview to what is their next major iOS update, the iOS 11.3. Apple's mobile operating system is going to get a fairly big update later this Spring but already they have released a beta version that reveals some of the updates.

For customers angered by the "batterygate" late last year, Cupertino-based tech mammoth will introduce an upgrade that will allow users with iPhone 6 and newer iPhones to keep track fo their batteries better. You can also turn off the feature that slashes the performance to protect battery and the device itself, if you so wish.

One of the major updates to iOS 11 itself include an updated ARKit. Apple's Augmented Reality platform is updated to version 1.5 and brings along item recognition and better control over inserting objects.

Previously you've only been allowed to drop items on horizontal surfaces, like tables or floors, but now you'll be able to use vertical ones as well. Objects to be placed on vertical surfaces include paintings and posters.

ARKit will also support Full HD -resolutions as well as automatic focus.

We've also got some good news for the people that thought animojis were the best new feature of iPhone X: iOS 11.3 update brings four new animojis to iPhone X. New characters include a skull, a bear, a dragon, and a lion. Animojis are of course animated emojis that can be controlled by your facial expressions and recorded to be shared with others.